The John Batchelor Show

Saturday 22 December 2012

Air Date: 
December 22, 2012

Photo:  View of the incinerator. During routine building operations in December 1988, a heat plume was generated that was registered on film by a passing aircraft. Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believed that illegal operations were being conducted. The EPA used this opportunity to convince authorities to issue a warrant to enter the Rocky Flats Plant and investigate the allegation. 

Headline, above:  Rocky Flats was the massive production facility for the second of three stages of nuclear bomb production. Only two such production chains existed on Earth, one in the USA, one in the then-Soviet Union. Fourteen tons of plutonium, one of the deadliest substances in existence, were stored at Rocky Flats, which long was improperly managed and suffered two enormous, lethal, radioactive fires.  It eventually was raided by the FBI: a federally-operated facility run by the US Department of Energy was raided by the US Department of Justice.

Along the populated front-range region just outside of Denver, Colorado, there's a battle taking place, all of which is tied to the now-defunct nuclear facility, Rocky Flats Plant.  Rocky Flats: Legacy is an expose of the untold story of the Rocky Flats nuclear plant and the contamination, death, and cover-ups that have plagued and continue to plague its existence.  For years, former nuclear workers from Rocky Flats have been fighting to obtain compensation for what they claim are work-related illnesses including cancer, beryllium disease, and other chronic illnesses.  For years, the workers have waited.  Many have gone bankrupt from medical bills that continued to pile up in the absence of compensation.  Many have died before they could ever see justice done.

At one time, however, there was hope.  In 2000, the government finally acknowledged that workers from Rocky Flats and most other nuclear facilities around the country were “put at risk without their knowledge and consent.”  A program to compensate them for their illnesses was thus established.   However, the program turned out to be an underfunded, under-scrutinized, and unresponsive bureaucracy.  It has become clear the government is more interested in saving money than helping these workers.  Rocky Flats: Legacy documents a group of former Rocky Flats workers who are fighting for their lives, as well as those who have died waiting for help.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Saturday 905P Eastern Time:   Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen;  1 of 4

"Iversen's reporting, extensive interviews, and review of FBI and EPA documents, shows how classifying a toxic nuclear site led to the ruin of hundreds of lives--and continues to pose ever-escalating threats as the legacy of what we know about such nuclear contamination is being swept under the rug by developers, energy lobbyists and government agencies colluding with them, at the risk of exposing more of us, more severely."

--Naomi WolfGuardian (UK)

Saturday 920P Eastern Time:   :   Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen;  2 of 4

Rocky Flats after clean-up nu DOE.

"Beautifully fuses Iversen's personal saga of maturation with the profoundly shocking history of the Rocky Flats site that few bothered to inform themselves about...Iversen writes her 50-year account in the present tense, a choice that lends her narrative a crackling immediacy. She writes with an eloquent precision, surprises frequently with personal anecdotes and abrupt, savory transitions. The result is fiercely non-polemical, nuanced and ultimately fully convincing...Iversen's account of two fires at the plant separated by 30 years, one of which nearly went critical, sears with first-person, real-time immediacy...Resonates with deep personal honesty...When she writes about the historical actors outside her personal orbit it is with a clarity of purpose and an economy of motion...Iversen has left us a beautiful memoir that recognizes the inevitable intrusion of greater social forces in all our lives and the risk we take in ignoring them." Denver Post.

Saturday 935P Eastern Time:  :   Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen; 3  of 4

“This is a subject as grippingly immediate as today's headlines: While there is alarm about the small rise in radioactivity in the food chain, one reads in these pages about how a whole region lived in the steady contaminating effects of nuclear radiation. Kristen Iversen's prose is clean and clear and lovely, and her story is deeply involving and full of insight and knowledge; it begins in innocence, and moves through catastrophes; it is unflinching and brave, an expose about ignorance and denial and the cost of government excess, and an intensely personal portrait of a family. It ought to be required reading for every single legislator in this country." Richard Bausch.

Saturday 950P Eastern Time:  Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen; 4  of 4

Rocky Flats, Colorado, before the clean-up by DOE.

 

Saturday 1005P (705P Pacific):  Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen; 1 of 4

Saturday 1020P (720P Pacific):  Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen; 2 of 4

Saturday 1035P (735P Pacific):  Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen; 3 of 4

Saturday 1050P (750P Pacific):  Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen; 4 of 4

 

Saturday 1105P (805P Pacific):   Paule Saviano, From Above – photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors; 1 of 2.

book from: PhotoEye.com    http://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?catalog=I1040

paule.saviano@gmail.com     917-803-8538

Saturday 1120P (820P Pacific):  Paule Saviano, From Above – photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors; 2 of 2.

book from: PhotoEye.com    http://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?catalog=I1040  

paule.saviano@gmail.com     917-803-8538

Saturday 1135P (835P Pacific):   The Language of Plants: A Guide to the Doctrine of Signatures by Julia Graves; 1 of 2

Saturday 1150P (850P Pacific):  The Language of Plants: A Guide to the Doctrine of Signatures by Julia Graves; 2 of 2

 

Saturday/Sun 1205A (905 Pacific):  Blood Medicine: Blowing the Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever by Kathleen Sharp; 1 of 2

Saturday/Sun 1220A (920 Pacific):   Blood Medicine: Blowing the Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever by Kathleen Sharp; 2 of 2

Saturday/Sun 1235A (935P Pacific): The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources by Michael T. Klare; 1 of 2

Saturday/Sun 1250A  (950P Pacific):  The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources by Michael T. Klare; 2 of 2